“Not here,” he says.
“That sounds inconvenient for you.”
“It’s dangerous for you.”
Rory steps closer. “She comes with me.”
Alessandro turns his head slightly. “She may.”
May.
One syllable. One knife.
I look between them, understanding that if I leave with Rory now, I become Irish grief behind Irish walls. Protected, yes. Loved, perhaps. But outside the room where the truth is being buried. Outside the system that has already begun swallowing the proof.
If I stay near Alessandro, I walk into the machinery. Machinery kills careless things. It also keeps records.
My father taught me that. Ink is easier to present than memory when someone needs convincing.
I turn back to Alessandro. “Where’s Dante?”
For the first time, something moves behind his eyes. “He’s being dealt with.”
My heart does something sharp and unpleasant against my ribs.
Rory hears it, too. Maybe not the answer, but the gap inside it. “What does that mean?”
Alessandro doesn’t answer him. He’s watching me.
And I understand. Dante was here. Dante is involved. Alessandro knows. And the official story is already being built without Dante in it.
For one moment, rage comes so fast and pure that my vision narrows. It would be easy to burst, to shout Dante’s name into the rain. To point at Alessandro and make the street look where it doesn’t want to look.
My father is dead. Someone should bleed for that. Preferably now, where I can watch.
But rage without leverage is theater, and theater is for people who expect applause instead of consequences.
So I swallow it down.
“When can I see the report?” I ask.
Rory turns to me like I’ve grown another head.
Alessandro doesn’t. That’s how I know I chose the correct question. “When it’s available.”
“To whom?”
“To the appropriate parties.”
I cock my head to one side. “AmIappropriate?”
“Not yet.”
I look at my father’s covered body. He arranged my marriage two weeks ago with a pen still warm from his hand and an apology he should’ve saved because now he owes me a great deal more than sorrow.
“Don’t be sorry,” I’d told him. “Be right.”
He wasn’t. That’s the one thing I cannot forgive him for yet.
